


Mistakes Were Made, More Shall Be

by bookofblueroses



Category: Xenogears
Genre: (Because we didn't really get to see Citan's interiority/internal monologue here), (because he's either wanting to die or wondering what could kill him), Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Betaed, Canon Compliant, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Contemplation, Contemplation of Fictional Racism And Rejection Of It, Contemplation of Immortality, Edited, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Heel Face Turn, Internal Conflict, Internal Monologue, Jerk Justifications, Language, Military Background, Original Solaris Elements, Overthinking, Rumination, Set at the end of disc one, Suicidal Thoughts, War, repost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:28:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26420419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookofblueroses/pseuds/bookofblueroses
Summary: [Edited and reposted AGAIN, hopefully third time is the charm!] For someone for whom so much relied upon precision, he could not seem to stop making these foolish errors. Citan Uzuki reflects upon a series of bad decisions with worse outcomes.
Relationships: Citan Uzuki/Fei Fong Wong, Citan Uzuki/Yui Uzuki, Fei Fong Wong/Elly Van Houten, only implied though, this is 99 percent gen
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Mistakes Were Made, More Shall Be

Citan knew that he had _fucked up_ , even if those were crude words he would not generally use to describe such a situation.

This time, there was no one with whom he could discuss it, could debrief, could analyze the situation to understand where the fatal error had been made. These were the times that he missed the military debriefings and check-ins with Emperor Cain as Solaris's agent, as risky as they were, as much as he had to phrase his actions in certain ways. The upside to them had been having people at least somewhat near his level of intelligence and understanding, and often even greater. People (or at the very least digitized existences, he was not sure whether the Gazel Ministry counted as _people_ anymore) that he could speak to about what he had done, ways to discuss his experiences in ways that allowed him to process them in _some_ way.

Now, _he_ was the one who knew the most about Fei, about their current situation. _everything_ since he had made that decision to side with him over Cain, he had taken on that responsibility. _The weight of the ronin. My decisions are my own, yet they are final, and when they are in error, it is impossible to learn from them before the next must be made._  
  
Now, there was almost no one to talk to who either did not distrust him to some degree, whom he had not failed in _some_ way in this absolute _shitstorm_ that had unfolded, from the second his first plan to simply sneak everyone into the labs had failed with their capture. He was well aware of how everyone felt toward his actions.

 _Even if_ the end of this chain of events definitively placed him no longer on Solaris' side, with Etrenank somewhere in the Aquvy sea in bombed-out ruins. _Even if,_ officially, his betrayal had been recognized in the moment as what it was. Necessary to fool Solaris into not simply executing them all, after the first infiltration plans had blown up in their faces, with his only having escaped to later assist them all by pretending to have led them in to be slaughtered. Necessary to use that alleged betrayal and those lies to get the access he needed to use the labs once again, to free them from the Limiters, necessary for resolving his own moral conflicts and understanding his own existence, once and for all, with full access to the P5 facility and the M Project records.

Then the decision, to betray Solaris and Cain once and for all, rather than arrange a meeting between them all and Cain to discuss matters, detain Miang and Krelian, and overpower the rest of the Gazel, which he had never planned, but which had become necessary with the events as they had unfolded - there was no way, he thought, that Cain would have tolerated their presence at that point, nor believed that they all had the power to deny their own Creator and fight even with the Anonelbe on their side...

His next decisions, he felt to be necessary for, in his opinion, showing Fei and Elly the truth of their world. So they would understand what it meant to take this path that he and they had chosen, that would set them on this course to destroy Solaris, to end the order of the world, the order of what had been for himself and Elly, their homeland, their nation, their everything.

The next, he felt to have also been necessary... to trigger Id to appear from Fei, because, he thought that by talking to him, that he could understand this condition of which he still knew next to nothing from his consultations of this planet's limited resources, and of which even the Gazel would not tell him. Also, he had known that out of those of them in Etrenank at the time, only himself, Jesiah, and Id had the combat capacity to manage extracting themselves from the Solarian capital, and ensuring that the mobile weapon would not simply strafe the land as vengeance for the defilement of Etrenank with Lambs. _Somewhere in the depths of my mind, I had feared that Id would lose all restraint. I had hoped that he would merely get us out and that the gate destruction would leave Etrenank exposed and vulnerable enough not to attack. Instead, he had to show the destructive capacity that had only shown in faint flickers in Elru and Lahan..._

His actions, always calculated for what seemed necessary. His objective: to bring rationality and draw a course for action, one that made sense of situations that made none. Except, he realized that from the betrayed look in Fei's eyes as he had awakened after Id had been forced onto the stage, the fear he knew he had subjected Fei to experience, solely to push him aside to talk to Id, the weakening of that boundary that had left him an omnicidal killer once more, when Id decided to get revenge for that betrayal, when Id decided to show all of them that he held the ultimate power and could do as he wished with it... that the blood of the innocent in Etrenank splattered his own hands as well as Fei's, and he too had brought not rationality but destruction and harm. He had _hurt the very person he felt bound to protect_.  
  
How everything had actually played out once they had arrived in Etrenank, as carefully calculated as it had been, he knew it had all fallen apart and yet he pursued his goals above all else anyway, his plans above all else. He had focused too much on the plan of somehow making this work regardless, and on his own calculations, and his own projections over what he had once treasured more - Fei's health and safety itself, his being happy and not fearful and having to fight. He still loved Fei, wished that he wished he could just grab him from Shevat’s prison cell and run off away from everyone to make their next plans, to let him heal and recover rather than be in this uncertain situation they all faced… He also knew he could not discuss it with Fei aside from apologies and trying to go on as they once had been, even as Fei's trust in him seemed less, now, and Fei's trust in Elly seemed to deepen - and he recognized it, the same way he had himself fallen in love with Yui, someone who offered hope in an impossible situation, more than he could at this point. The only hope he could offer, the only path he knew from this point on, was still one of war and violence, even if he craved an end to it, had lived that beautiful lie of a peaceful family life...  
  
He could not speak up to anyone in Shevat, including Yui, to free Fei from the fate to which he had been assigned - it was not like anyone in Shevat had anywhere near the level of trust in him that Cain had before their escape. In fact, he knew too well that most people in Shevat viewed him as a two-faced traitor at best. If he tried to escape with Fei, he would simply end up losing their only remaining allied nation aside from Bart and Sigurd with Aveh, because Zephyr and Shevat would take that as his taking the sword with which he had backstabbed Cain and turning it on them too.  
  
That potential outcome, of losing everyone other than Aveh and Fei was itself predicated upon whether _Fei_ really did trust him enough, and somehow Sigurd did too, and understood his need to betray Shevat right after just betraying Solaris - something that seemed unlikely at this point. All the more, because Sigurd and Jesse seemed uninterested in discussing the matter with him - it hurt in its own way that Sigurd did not think he had fucked up as much as he knew he had but instead assumed that he had planned it all, and everything would work out if they just stayed allied with Shevat and let Fei be subjected to the execution - after all, it was unlikely to actually succeed - Id easily had the power to overcome a carbonite freezing vessel before it succeeded at its task, had they not all just seen that? Was it not, according to Sigurd, better just to let things happen and play along? It seemed impossible that even Sigurd, with all the trust they shared in each other, would side with him in betraying Shevat as well as Solaris.  
  
Jesse’s attitude was “We made it out alive, didn’t we, who cares what we had to do?” And in his mind, as they drank together, Citan wanted to scream back, “Yes, we did make it out alive, but at what cost? What have I done? What have _we_ done? Could there not have been a better way?” Yet he knew if he did, Jesse would not understand his concerns. After all, that was the one thing ground so deeply into even someone who had rejected Solaris and its worldview as Jesse had - that success was _worth anything_ , and if you came back alive with those with whom you had undertaken the mission? That was a success. Everything else? Expendable.

That very view was the one he had to rely on, because there was no time to contemplate as he was. Regardless of what happened to anyone, he knew what the next moves were - allow Fei to be killed, unless Id somehow could save him and that would scare Shevat into letting him leave. Build Shevat’s defenses, as well as Aveh's and Kislev's, so the loss of Etrenank actually meant something, as well as being symbolic. Build up his own shelter, in case the Gazel decided to use the Key, engage in orbital bombardment, or unleash the hidden mobile weapons system. Plans upon plans, things that had to be done, and that was why he was there, was it not? The chessboard in his mind, still there, even if the pieces had been shaken beyond recognition, even if it swam amidst the strongest moonshine Jesse had somehow been able to procure.  
  
The thought came to him as he wandered Aphel Aura, as he stood on the overlook debating whether to throw himself off of it - _how long would the fall to the ground be? Would I lose consciousness midway, or would I live to see every bit of the fall, as I have just seen the fall of Etrenank_? Would what had allowed him to survive, albeit badly injured, everything from minor grazes to planet illnesses, to Fenrir being blown apart by a Shevatian cannon blast and Yui’s sword through his heart so many years ago, allow him to survive once more, would simply throwing himself off the overlook be the ultimate test of his alleged immortality?  
  
Etrenank, again, came to his mind - as much as he knew its destruction was, in its own way, justice and the only thing that paved the way for a world free of Solaris’ domination - he knew how many people must have died, as his mind ran through everything - the last census calculation of both Abels and Lambs - those words again, the one that had earned him a slap from Yui for using them in Midori’s earshot with “ _we are not raising her as you were, ever, to her all are equals, as you have taken so long to learn_ ,” ahem, then, so many human lives of both, at least ten million - _how many could have gotten to the emergency descent capsules in time? How many lay dead in the ocean of the planet they had once seen as below them, in every sense of the words "below them," and had they at least passed peacefully...?_

Id sent his message, but at such a cost? Citan felt tears well in his eyes - there were people he still had known and kept in contact with there, people he had checked in with when he arrived back in the city for the first time. He had done his best to warn them that what he brought with him could be destruction, and they had better get on the next flight to the surface… but had they? _Had the lab techs whom I had worked with, had the last class at the academy I had trained as a guest instructor, the people in the shops I always visited… had anyone taken my “if you can, leave now, I am saying this for your benefit,” warning seriously? Because who would have wanted to leave Etrenank for the uncertainties of the ground? What Solarian in their right mind would have even considered the thought, even if the warning came from the Guardian Angel himself?_  
  
There was nothing he could do about that _right now_ , though, and that hurt the most. That in the end, he had been left as a helpless _observer_ , one with no choice but to watch as the consequences of his plans went into motion, as the carefully plotted subversion of Etrenank that had been supposed to simply result in destroying the Gates, removing the Limiters, and gathering intelligence on what Solaris’ efforts with the M Plan and Krelian’s and Miang’s involvement enough to both make his final decision, and to flip Ramsus to turn on both and demand their execution as traitors to Cain… had instead turned into… that nightmare that had drawn him to the ultimate test of his knowledge and skill, to get everyone else out of alive.  
  
Of course, he could have simply saved his own skin, could have just sided with Krelian and Miang and with Solaris itself, it was not like Jesse’s threat actually would have meant anything to him due to his body’s effective immortality - but when the choice landed before him, that moment when he had seen it all, known what he would be supporting and that _no, it was not morally permissible to rule over other humans and demihumans as their betters at best and their enslavers at worst, to use their flesh as food and fuel and their bodies as labor,_ and that the problem with his very homeland ran far deeper than either of them, but to the very core of what it meant to be an “Abel.”  
  
Citan found himself wandering to the Gear dock at the palace. Weltall stood there in one of the docks, even if its owner was under guard in Shevat’s prison below, awaiting what would be effectively his own _execution_ \- the word made him cringe, now - by the supposedly free state they had worked so hard to protect. Of course they had their rational reasons - who would not have had them, after having seen how effectively Id had destroyed Etrenank, how simple it would be for him to end the world if he were free and chose to do so - but the thought, now, of any more death, even that of Id, perhaps especially that of Id as it was a betrayal worse than any of his own, made him feel ill. The thought came to him then, the words - _if you love someone, let them go, set them free and they shall return to you, if they truly did love you_.  
  
With that, he knew that the course of his actions, the only one he could choose to remedy the horrific mistakes he had already made, and he walked toward the fueling panel. The readout blinked before him, to show the plans that Jesse had discussed with him, a little, before they had gotten completely plastered, and he was still somewhat drunk - maybe he had to be, to even consider this. Jesse’s plan, one the others had agreed upon, was that Fei and Elly would stay under the guard of Shevat, and the rest of them would leave with their Gears aboard the Yggdrasil the next morning, find whatever possible way they could take out the Gazel Satellite, and with that, deal the final blow to Solaris.  
  
That plan bothered him, though, because there was no plan. Citan had had more than enough of Jesse’s “strategies,” especially after these last events and his having to put such strategies into place for himself - he was a man very uncomfortable with the “fly by the seat of your pants” school of war and espionage, despite having been there for the last years, and because that had brought them to this very place when he had to invoke it, once again. He needed concrete, solid plans, based on the best information he had. And yet… he still wanted to do something.  
  
_If…_ he thought to himself, _if I fuel Weltall and Vierge instead, and provide for Fei and Elly to just go somewhere, anywhere, on their own where they will not be dragged into whatever is about to unfold for the world, for Fei to gain control of himself once more_ … that, he thought, would be the very best thing he could do in the moment. It would demand the plan to attack Gazel be delayed one more day, it would give them all the time to stop and think that he craved so much at this point… He knew how to do it so surreptitiously the alarm would not be triggered, from his days working on Gears in Solaris, and simply switched the fuel switches from Andvari and Fenrir to Weltall and Vierge, then changed the data so it looked as if that arrangement had been planned from the beginning. This would do for the time being, and it felt as if a small weight of all of that guilt had been lifted from his shoulders.  
  
The next step had been even simpler - Citan had spread a rumor to the guards minding Fei that some renegade Solarians had been hiding out in Aphel Aura, that they had confided in him as their military leader in absentia - of course the Shevatians would believe that. There was no reason they would not believe it, after all - the Shevatians did believe he still did not have their best interests at heart.  
  
The rest would be up to Elly, and he knew enough to know that she would be able to get him to go with her, even when he likely would not have been able to break through Fei’s acceptance of his fate at this point, because that trust had been so broken, by his own actions, at that - but she would. She always did... _It is all I can possibly do, to make up for my violating my own promise to you, to keep you from being pointlessly entangled in vain struggles. Please… have a good life together._  
  
It would only be a couple weeks later that word reached him about Fei and Elly having been shot down by Ramsus, that they were barely holding onto life somewhere in a couple of nanoreactors, that Krelian and Miang’s faction was gaining in power beyond even what the Gazel itself had accomplished. That Solaris was regrouping faster than anyone, including him, had ever considered…and he realized that he was not yet done with his worst mistakes.


End file.
